A coating and developing apparatus is usually used for a photolithography step of a substrate in manufacturing processes of, for example, a semiconductor device. The coating and developing apparatus includes: a loader/unloader section loading/unloading the substrate into/out of an apparatus main body; a processing section in which a series of a plurality of processes such as resist coating processing, development processing, and heat treatment are performed; and an interface section delivering the substrate to/from an aligner provided adjacent to the apparatus, and each of these sections has a carrier unit carrying the substrate to/from the adjacent sections.
In recent years, there has been also proposed a coating and developing apparatus including an inspection section that inspects film thickness, line width, and so on of a substrate that has been processed (see, for example, Patent document 1). According to this coating and developing apparatus, it is possible to inspect the substrate immediately after it is processed to thereby detect trouble and the like of the substrate processing at an early stage.
Conventionally, a flow of the substrate processing executed in a coating and developing apparatus is controlled by, for example a control section in the coating and developing apparatus. In a control section of a conventional coating and developing apparatus not provided with the aforesaid inspection section, a flow is set such that a substrate carried from the loader/unloader section is carried into the processing section to be processed there, and the substrate having undergone the processing is returned to the loader/unloader section. In a flow set in a control section of a coating and developing apparatus provided with the aforesaid inspection section, the inspection flow in the inspection section is combined with the conventional flow, and more specifically, substrates carried from the loader/unloader section are carried to the processing section to be processed therein, a substrate selected from the substrates having been processed is inspected in the inspection section, and all the substrates are thereafter returned to the loader/unloader section. Therefore, when carried into the loader/unloader section, the substrates to be processed in the coating and developing apparatus are all sure to be carried to the processing section and processed therein and are selectively inspected in the inspection section thereafter.
At startup of the coating and developing apparatus, an adjustment work of adjusting various kinds of settings and so on of processing units in the processing section and an evaluation work of evaluating accuracy and the like of the inspection section are necessary. The adjustment work of the processing section and the evaluation work of the inspection section have to proceed separately in order to exclude external factors. However, in the coating and developing apparatus including the aforesaid inspection section, when the flow of the substrate processing is executed, the substrate is sure to pass through the processing section, so that external disturbance is applied to the substrate and thus the execution of the flow hinders the evaluation work of the inspection section. Therefore, for performing the evaluation work of the inspection section, a specialized evaluation unit including a mechanism carrying a substrate directly into/from the inspection section is separately provided adjacent to the inspection section, thereby carrying the substrate into/from the inspection section from/to the evaluation unit. Therefore, the specialized evaluation unit is required for the startup work of the coating and developing apparatus, which burdens, for example, a substrate manufacturer with purchase cost and maintenance cost of the evaluation unit and burdens an apparatus manufacturer and an inspection device manufacturer with development cost and development labor of the evaluation unit.
In addition, it is quite natural that the adjustment work of the processing section, which is performed by making a substrate actually flow, cannot be performed while the evaluation work of the inspection section, which uses the specialized evaluation unit, is in progress. Thus, conventionally, simultaneous execution of the evaluation work of the inspection section and the adjustment work of the processing section was not possible, resulting in an extensive amount of the startup time of the coating and developing apparatus.
Moreover, during the substrate processing in the coating and developing apparatus, one substrate per a predetermined number of substrates is inspected in many cases and thus the inspection section is often in an idle state. Therefore, improvement in operating rate of the inspection section and efficient utilization of the inspection section are demanded.
[Patent document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-223401